A Good Posset for a Winter's Night

In his postumously published book, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Kenelm Digby, Knight, (London: 1670 or 71), is a recipe for the favorite posset of Charles Howard, the 1^st Earl of Carlisle.

Since a good posset is hard to come by these days, it seems the recipe should be reprinted here.

Take a pottle of Cream, and boil in it a little whole Cinnamon, and three or four flakes of Mace. To this proportion of Cream put in eighteen yolks of eggs, and eight of the whites; a pint of Sack; beat your eggs very well, and then mingle them with your Sack. Put in three quarters of a pound of Sugar into the Wine and Eggs, with a Nutmeg grated, and a little beaten Cinnamon; set the Bason on the fire with the Wine and Eggs, and let it be hot. Then put in the Cream boiling from the fire, pour it on high, but stir it not; cover it with a dish, and when it is settlede, strew on the top a little fine Sugar mingled with three grains of Ambergreece, and one grain of Musk, and serve it up.

Pouring the cream in from a height mixed it with the sack, however the two would seperate, (the cream rising to the top, naturally), and create a sort of custard layer above the wine. The foam would also stiffen and become a third grace layer on top. Interesting that the very top gets its flavoring from ambergris and musk. I assume they do mean ambergris from whales.

All of this goes to show that our miserable forbears did have cunning schemes to get themselves through winter in some comfort, and that people did not live as savage barbarians before the invention of fluffernutter sandwiches.